


You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teachers, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Humor, Male-Female Friendship, Music, Musicals, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 01:58:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9050740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Who doesn't love a good musical?





	1. Act I: “Shall We Dance” The King and I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hufflepuffhermione](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepuffhermione/gifts).



Auditioning for the musical had been Mary’s idea and as such, was inherently logical and supported by at least three arguments, all of which Mary had made as Emma navigated the alternate route the GPS was taking them to school since the new ice cream parlor on the corner of the unimaginatively named Middle Rd. needed a frankly terrifying amount of sewage work and the attendant trucks, emergency vehicles and police made the regular way all very backed-up, the pun sort-of intended by her internal monologue. Mary had pointed out that Emma sang along to the radio every time they got in the car and had been the soloist in her church choir, could use some different activities on her college application, and, most importantly, would prefer to spend as little time at home as possible while the battle of Jimmy’s latest boarding school decision was ongoing. She’d added she was trying out and that several other juniors had expressed interest, nonchalantly mentioning Henry Hopkins sandwiched between Byron Hale and Lisette Beaufort. She’d finished brightly, “Come on, it’ll be so much fun!” and Emma had believed her and scribbled her name on the sign-up sheet outside Mr. McBurney’s door, wondering again why it wasn’t online and remembering that Mr. McBurney would go on a 10 minute rant about technology if she asked it aloud. She’d expected to get cast as one of the King’s many children, so she could sing in the chorus and dance in one big number but after the auditions, about which, less said the better, she was shocked to see her name listed as the understudy for Anna.

“It’s the lead, Mary! I’ve never been in a musical before,” she’d exclaimed. Mary hadn’t missed a beat.

“Well, A) clearly McBurney thinks you’re talented enough to carry the show which proves he isn’t a complete and utter moron and B) it is the understudy role, you’re not going on every night, no offense, Em.” 

It had been perfectly Mary and perfectly reassuring, balancing praise with practicality, and Emma had relaxed a little. The understudy got to perform at the second matinee, for the elementary school kids on a field trip, and then as a literal understudy, if the regular lead was sick or injured or replaced by a pod person who didn’t know the lines. Lisette had been cast as the lead and was reliable and committed to performing, so it wasn’t likely Emma would do more than attend all the rehearsals, learn all the lines, songs, cues and dances, and then perform with Val Squivers as the King for a bunch of third and fourth graders. Which was to say, it was not so very demanding, other than making sure she didn’t grimace whenever Val was directed to be romantic towards her. He was the kind of guy who you felt like was always about to adjust his retainer even though he hadn’t had one for three years. 

Except, Val was out sick or something today, rumors about him throwing up in Algebra II being unsubstantiated but, knowing Val, likely, and now she was standing across from Henry Hopkins, trying Method acting to convince herself he was the King of Siam and she was Anna Leonowens, a prim widowed Englishwoman with a child, not a high school junior face to face with the boy she’d had a secret (not so secret to Mary, but in general, yes) crush on for over a year. God, he was beautiful and she didn’t dare look at him in case he could tell by looking how she felt about him. And now McBurney was shouting at them, as if he wasn’t three feet from the stage and everyone was dead silent, nearly howling about how they were going to practice the waltz from the “Shall We Dance” scene and that Emma was not supposed to forget she’d be wearing a ball gown but not to focus on that either, or her feet. She couldn’t help it, after the years of ballet class and cotillion, the idea that she would be looking at her feet while she was dancing was so insulting, she positively glared at McBurney, the kind of glare that would have embarrassed him, even though he was an adult and a teacher and she was just a high school junior, except he was too far away to receive the full impact and already absorbed with scolding someone else. Henry saw it, her, though and let out a low whistle.

“Wow. What are you going to do if I step on your toes? I might, I’m warning you, dancing’s not exactly my thing,” Henry said in a low voice, as if there were a lot of other people around them who might hear, even though there were only a few kids in the wings and McBurney ranting on his phone for a few minutes in the relatively distant gloom of the auditorium.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said in a near-hiss, somehow sounding so much like her mother and Aunt Mary Welford she could hardly bear it, that this was the first time they’d spoken really and he was marveling at her spiteful glare and she was acting like a 50 year matron in response.

“Sorry, I was just trying to be funny. But it’s true, I’m not a great dancer, I’ll try though,” he said, as if she hadn’t just scolded him, as if he were trying to get in her good graces. She glanced up at him—he was so tall! and saw he was looking earnestly at her, smiling a little to try and diffuse her bad temper.

“Okay, you two, enough dawdling! Let’s take it from the beginning of the dance sequence,” McBurney called as if he’d given them directions repeatedly instead of ignoring them to berate someone on his phone for the past few minutes. Emma felt Henry put a tentative hand at her waist and used all her will-power to suppress the shiver it gave her to feel his touch; she reached up to take his other hand and raised them high in the pose they were starting with, before they sailed into the galloping waltz around the stage.

“And remember, you’re unsure at the beginning but by the end, we want to know you’re both in love!” McBurney yelled.

“I’m not sure I can show that through dancing,” Henry muttered, his forehead slightly furrowed. She squeezed the hand she held in hers, a bold hussy she thought, and then fleetingly thought she’d been reading too much Georgette Heyer again, before she felt him adjust their hands, so he clasped her hand more confidently, the hand at her waist a command. She imagined the pale gold silk ball gown billowing around her and Henry regal in the red brocade costume he’d laughed about earlier and looked back, shy but unable to conceal everything she wanted.

“I think you can…Henry,” she murmured. He would have said something, done something, but McBurney bellowed,

“Any day now! We have three more scenes to run through! And your history papers won’t grade themselves!”

Emma blushed. They’d missed the start of the cued music and there was a brief scramble in the booth to restart it, then Henry smiled as the chords began and began dancing; Anna was supposed to be teaching the King but Emma found she was following and learning. Henry was singing under his breath “…on a bright cloud of music, shall we fly?” and she thought she did, his arm around her, not once stepping on her feet. She hoped Mr. McBurney could stay quiet until they’d finished so she could remember this perfection, no matter what came next, when the next little star had left the sky.


	2. Act II: “People Will Say We’re In Love” Oklahoma

Sam had said he was over-thinking it but right at the moment, Jed felt like there had been no thinking at all that had preceded this moment, that he was stupider than the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, which is what McBurney had picked last year, he was a fucking _idiot_ , half-shouting at Mary where she sat at her music stand, having not responded to his lame throat-clearing and the way he’d thumped down his trumpet case,

“Hey! Scout!”

It had worked, sort of, because she looked up at him then, startled and quizzical, let the book she’d had open fall shut, and replied, “Um, what?”

See, if he’d been overthinking, he’d probably have like seven responses to her, he could just pick and choose, but he felt like the Geico caveman—or worse, because that guy could probably have put together a few important nouns and verbs and she would have understood something, whereas he, Jed, was about to mess everything up. His mother repeatedly made it clear he was good at that, so he shouldn’t have been so surprised, but he had hoped…

“I, um, you’re early. For rehearsal,” he said, gesturing loosely at the empty pit orchestra, the chairs and stands all seeming flimsier without the other kids anchoring them, Lisette sashaying around with her violin tucked under her arm, her bow held like Hermione Granger’s wand at the ready, Tommy Fairfax nearly dropping his string bass after spinning it around to impress Alice who required hardly any effort on a guy’s part to accomplish that result.

“Yeah. The library was getting crowded and Miss Brannan told me I could leave and come here early, since I was the only one trying to get any work done. I think she gave everyone else detention,” she replied. “Did you want to practice alone? I’d leave but there’s really no where else to go.” She uncrossed and crossed her legs in their dark jeans and he wasn’t supposed to be looking at them or her slender waist emphasized by her South American-y embroidered belt, how her throat looked emerging from the loose peasant blouse, the hint of a bra strap before she fiddled with the neckline…

“No. I just, I, I wanted to talk to you. Alone,” he said. This had all the makings of a disaster of epic proportions. Sam had made it sound so easy, just “hey man, talk to her before pit starts, you can sort of lead up to it…she’s nice, if she doesn’t want to, she’ll say so but she’s not mean.” Of course, Sam was actually friends with Mary, someone who genuinely was expected to call her “Scout,” her nickname since 6th grade when she came to the school Halloween costume party in character and spent the whole night explaining the plot of _To Kill a Mockingbird_ to anyone who’d listen. Jed had hung out with the middle school soccer team like it was possible to be cool in 6th grade and had tried to ignore her. He’d failed at both endeavors.

“Okay. We’re alone. Right now, so…” she trailed off. He’d paused an overly long time, like minutes, which were like epochs when it wasn’t the last five you begged to finish a video game, but were sitting with a girl twice a smart as you and with the prettiest dark eyes and long eyelashes.

“Did you always want to play the flute?” he blurted out. Shit. He’d frozen and his mouth had brain had worked out some weird compromise, seemingly without any of his sentient awareness, taking in the flat rectangle of her flute case neatly stowed by her bookbag which had like 37 zippers and each one was neatly zipped shut. His messenger bag had a flap that he forgot to flip over most of the time.

“Not really. It’s all they offered though, in 3rd grade, and when I asked to play the trombone, they told me my arms were too short and the case would be heavy and girls played the flute. My parents would’ve argued, but the school gave us the flute for free and we would’ve had to rent the trombone. Is that what you wanted to know?” she said. It totally wasn’t but it was interesting.

“Not exactly.” He should have prepared some segue or gotten a friend of hers to set the stage. 

“I never thanked you, for what you did,” he said. He and Sam had argued about this, whether he should say anything. Sam seemed to think it was water under the bridge “and do you really want to remind her of it and then try to ask her out? It’s not a real selling point” but he’d felt like it would be weirder to continue to not-acknowledge what had happened and then still try to ask her out. The asking-out would be nerve-wracking regardless. Or irregardless; Miss Brannan had a rant about the words but he’d tuned out and so he couldn’t remember why one was “an abomination against the glorious English language and literacy itself.”

“I should have, but I was kind of messed up there for a while,” he added. Mary’d been the one to call 911 when he passed out at that party in 9th grade after downing a bottle of vodka; she’d also called her mom who tailed the ambulance over and made sure all the other parents came right away to pick everyone up. He really didn’t remember much about the night, fighting at home first, which wasn’t unusual, and simply not caring after that second shot, not about his parents’ constant fighting or whether his brother would make varsity ahead of him, how he didn’t want to French kiss Liza and she expected him too, why his mother always gave Sam a dirty look when Jed invited him over. 

He’d been kept overnight after they charcoaled him and the doctor who saw him in the morning, the sort of guy who deserved to be named P. Alan Squivers MD like his name-tag read, told him very precisely how dangerous it had been, how lucky he’d been that someone noticed him barely breathing and had “had the necessary foresight to contact appropriate authorities.” The doctor had sounded like an epic nerd but he’d been right; no one else had even tried to stop him from drinking and Mary had called in everyone she could think of to try and save his sorry ass. And then he’d come back to school a week later, appointments scheduled with a family therapist and a counselor just for him, more work excused than he’d expected, and he hadn’t said a word to her. She hadn’t said anything about it to anyone, maybe Sam, but they didn’t talk about it much. Sam would have called but he hadn’t been there, on a church trip with his extended family, and instead there had been Mary, Scout, paying attention and willing to take on the whole world to make sure a kid who’d never done anything but smirk at her across the classroom or cafeteria didn’t choke to death on his own vomit.

“Anybody would have done what I did, you don’t owe me a thank-you,” she said. He couldn’t tell if her tone meant she was uncomfortable or serious or just wishing he’d leave her alone.

“Anybody didn’t though, just you, Mary. I could’ve died,” he said and he was uncomfortable and serious but he didn’t want to leave her alone unless he had to.

“Well, you didn’t. You’re okay,” she replied. “So, you don’t have to, I don’t know, feel like you owe me a life-debt.” She smiled then at him and he couldn’t help grinning back.

“That’s good. My wand is in the shop,” he quipped, then grimaced at how lame he sounded. She was still smiling though and he thought she probably had opinions on wand cores and the economics of Ollivander’s business model.

“So, is that what you wanted to ask me? Talk to me about?” she asked. It was now or never (or at least, now or a lot later and would he ever get the courage to say something if he let this moment go? He suspected not).

“No,” he said and paused.

“Really? Because that was kind of a lot,” she said, filling the silence he’d left between them.

“I, can I call you ‘Scout?’ Please?” he said. She tilted her head a little as if she were considering.

“You already have,” she said softly.

“Can I, will you go out with me? We can do whatever you like, the movies or go to Starbucks, I don’t know,” he said, babbled really. He shut his mouth, fairly certain he could only make it worse.

“You’ve really put a lot of thought into this date, huh?” she replied, her voice sly like he’d never heard it before. He just looked at his hands, afraid his eyes would be mutely pleading and pathetic.

“Okay, yes. But we probably should decide what we’re actually doing before you come pick me up?” Yes. She’d said yes and he could hear the noise of the rest of the pit orchestra gathering in the hallway but in his head, all he heard was _yes yes yes_.

“Yeah. Yes. Definitely, will do,” he said and she laughed again, the prettiest sound from the prettiest girl.

“Later, though. Because Mr. Summers is walking in and I don’t feel like hearing his opinion on it. Remember how he went on and on about _spanferkel_?”

“Yeah, Scout,” he answered, to say yes to her again, to call her the name that meant they were friends or maybe, possibly, the beginning of more.


	3. Intermission: “Make Believe” Showboat

If you were the kind of person that said such things, you’d almost certainly say that Emma Veronica Green was the textbook example of an ingénue, like the Wikipedia image and old-school Encyclopedia Britannia black-and-white sketch rolled into one and she’d pretty much been that way since 9th grade, when whatever extremely mild awkward junior high phase she’d been in ended on exactly the first day of high school. You wouldn’t say Henry Ignatius Hopkins was the leading man—of anything; he was more the cheerful, gangly, nice sidekick as opposed to the savvy, sassy, worldly-wise one. In fact, it would have baffled him to be cast as Gaylord Ravenal in this year’s Hammerstein choice (Mr. McBurney’s preferred genre of musicals, despite Mary Phinney’s vociferous lobbying for the abridged version of Rent, “bowdlerized,” she’d ranted, “but still worth challenging the status quo with!”), except that Jed Foster, who was the standard lead, having already been Curly, Billy Bigelow, and a rather louche Captain von Trapp, had had an epiphany about becoming a surgeon and was shadowing a doctor at the community hospital after school plus actually seriously working on his AP classes and had refused to audition, much to Mr. McBurney’s histrionic dismay. Jed had cornered him one day when it was too wet and miserable to play hacky-sack in the courtyard and sort of half-begged, half-commanded him to try out for the musical “to get McBurney off my back.” 

Henry had agreed, largely because he didn’t expect to be cast as anyone, let alone as the riverboat gambler. McBurney had let it slip that he’d chosen Henry because his voice was adequate and he was tall, but also because everyone knew about _that_ fight he’d had in 9th grade with Jack McGinity who’d been calling Henry and his sister Deborah names, the one he’d gotten a week’s suspension for and a curious respect from his peers he hated, everyone including McBurney who pointed out no one was going to mock Henry for playing a character named “Gaylord” but that someone like Val Squivers would get eaten alive. Henry had refrained from pointing out that getting eaten alive was sort of Val Squivers’s default mode and just nodded; adults liked when you nodded, sagely if you could hack it. Henry was tall and blessedly free of acne, so he could do sage pretty accurately.

What he was struggling with doing was suave, devil-may-care gambler, even though the costume fit well and the Howard Keel mustache was not required; he could manage friendly joshing if the drama kids, somehow now including him, were all together at a long folding table in the cafeteria, near the part of the mural on the cement block wall with the all-seasons tree, the leaves painted with names of students from the class of ’74, with Jed and Mary sparring like they always did and Sam playing peace-maker, Char breaking out accents to make everyone laugh, Emma bright and pretty and sharp when he least expected it, her boyfriend Frank who went by “Swigger” and TJ Fairfax anchoring the end, talking about cars and the ball game. Anne and Byron were there but they collectively ignored them sucking face as much as they could because there were a few truly commonly agreed upon points at Carlyle High and one was that Byron and Anne were tolerable separately but together became a repellent entity it was best to avoid. They were never cast as the leading couple because McBurney had divined after watching them for five minutes that any audience forced to see them as a couple would leave in droves, but they were both strong singers and Anne was longing for McBurney to put on Mame so she could play the lead.

Emma had suggested, sotto voce, that Anne would eat the scenery if she ever got to be Mame, “she can still claim she’s vegan too,” and Henry hadn’t been able to keep from bursting out laughing at the image, Anne crossed with Cookie Monster in his mind. Emma had raised an eyebrow, a delicate dark eyebrow like a butterfly’s antennae, and he’d frozen under her gaze. That moment and several more like it, the common theme Emma turning her attention to him and regarding him with a steady care she didn’t bother to use on her boyfriend or any of the other guys either, were what he thought was making it so terrifically hard to pull off any of the scenes that had Magnolia Hawks and Gaylord Ravenal front and center.

“It’s called acting, Hopkins! Perhaps you’ve heard of it?” McBurney shouted. 

Henry knew from sitting in the audience during rehearsal for fun and from the rumor-mill, which was faster than Twitter if slightly less accurate, that Jed generally shouted right back, a call-and-response number they both enjoyed it would appear, as McBurney ended nearly all of them with “That’s my boy! Foster! Just get on with it.” Henry knew he couldn’t come up with anything to say to McBurney, because he wasn’t acting, and because disrespect for adults was anathema in his household.

“Sorry!” he’d yelled back, only to make sure the drama teacher could hear him, grimacing at little at the volume, how pathetic he was, and that Emma was right next to him, watching the whole thing.

“Take it from the top! If you can’t do anything else, just try to copy Han Solo in Empire, that’s about your speed, Hopkins,” McBurney called, assuaged it seemed and finally having given some direction that Henry had a chance in hell of finding helpful. He was really more a Doctor Who fan, but everyone knew Solo. He was trying to think about just how Harrison Ford made his face look when he said “Princess” to Leia, that snarky drawl, when Emma interrupted.

“There’s another way,” she said quietly. She still looked exactly how Nolie was supposed to, even in jeans and a Christmassy sweater, all snowflakes on an indigo field, her lips pink under the lip-gloss she was slowly nibbling off instead of a _Gone With the Wind_ get-up (that must have been murder on a riverboat).

“What do you mean?”

“The song, ‘Make Believe,’ they’re singing it to each other, but they really mean they aren’t making believe at all, they love each other,” she said, lifting dark eyes to him. He’d thought they were brown, but maybe he was wrong—in this light, they looked grey, like the ocean could or a cloud.

“Yeah?” he said, not sure what she meant.

“Maybe we don’t have to make believe so much, like Nolie and Gay, maybe it’s more real,” she said, her cheeks rosy; was she blushing?

“Emma?”

“Henry. Are you really going to make me say more?” she said and paused, dropping her gaze to her lap, where her hands lay. There was ink on her right hand and her nails were bare of paint, bitten actually. He tried to figure out what he should say when she made a little impatient huff.

“It’s not make believe for me, all right? I thought, maybe it’s not for you either—if you could get out of your own head for a minute, you could maybe see that, get what I’m saying.” McBurney and everyone else were far enough away they wouldn’t see what he did; he took her left hand, her skin was so soft, and brushed his thumb across her palm and her lips parted in an “oh” she didn’t let breath behind.

“Only make believe…I love you,” he sang, knowing McBurney could have no complaint about his style, his tone, pitch or the way he looked at Emma, “Only make believe…that you love me…” They would have to talk more later but for now, he was eminently satisfied with Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics, and he meant to sing the hell out of them; Emma seemed happy to listen and he felt her hand clasp his back as she joined him, her soprano gold, silver, everything bright and honest, as she lied and lied until the last line.


	4. Act III: “So in Love” Kiss Me, Kate

The auditorium was dim when she got there, just as Mary had expected. There was some light from one of the back doors, open to a hallway of windows and the stage lights were on low but the wide stage, the deep crimson curtains and the navy blue upholstery of the folding seats all gave the impression of shadows and gloom. It was just where she wanted to be.

She’d brought her work-bag, a ratty sailcloth satchel she was unduly fond of, and as usual, papers were spilling out but she had to dig around in its depths to find a pen, discovering a glove she’d given up on ever seeing again last winter in her exploration. She had her iPhone and a set of ear buds so she could have turned on some music, soothing or invigorating, but she decided it was a day for ordinary silence with its ordinary small sounds and she told herself she’d make it through at least 4 or 5 papers on Equus before the kids arrived for rehearsal. She told herself that but she wasn’t surprised when her thoughts wandered, drifting, fatigue and memories winding around her. She pushed away the reverie of an early winter a few years ago which hadn’t ebbed to melancholy, still hurt too much, and considered the musical she was directing, whether she could get Anne to play Kate in such a way that the audience didn’t want to kill her; she was such a talented girl, so strong in so many ways, but she didn’t know how to modulate her voice, attitude or any aspect of general demeanor. It would have been tolerable for a more straightforward, brassy character, but that wasn’t Kate and it wasn’t the Kate Mary wanted in her musical. Anne took instruction poorly though and Mary was having to find endless new emotional aikido moves to get her to alter her performance. She was running through Anne’s latest rendition of “Wunderbar” in her mind, in which she’d nearly drowned out her leading man, the swaying rhythm of the remembered waltz making Mary lose track of just how stridently Anne had performed the lyrics when the clarinet’s soft wail cut through.

It only took her a few notes to recognize the melody but that might have been because it was one of her favorites, “I Loves You, Porgy.” She closed her eyes for a minute to simply listen to the music, the confidence of the musician allowing both insistence and poignancy to achieve a balance, breath given form in such a way to suggest such tenderness and the recognition of how transient, delicate love could be. She rubbed her hands along the nubby fabric of the seat to remind her where she was, when, and opened her eyes to convince herself of reality. 

It was Jed Foster, as she’d thought it might be; she’d never gotten to hear him play before, but his years at Berklee were evident, the rumors about his gigs at clubs in Boston instantly believable. She downgraded her previous internal snarkiness about his cockiness—he really was _that_ good. She wasn’t sitting that far away, but she was fairly sure he hadn’t seen her based on the complete lack of notice he’d given to her and the un-self-conscious way she saw him moving as he played. He was closer to the lights of the pit orchestra than she was; she saw the way the silver gleamed against the ebony of the instrument, how agile his hands were playing, the crisp edge of his blue oxford’s open collar against his throat. She let her eyes rest on him and found she was unsettled, not only by the music, the echo of the lyrics in her mind “If you can keep me…I want to stay here,” but by the shape of his mouth, the way he closed his eyes and how long his lashes were; it had been a while since she’d entertained any ideas like that but she recognized attraction, some basic carnal pull towards him that hadn’t been clear until this moment when she _wanted_. She watched him play until he somehow sensed her gaze and broke off, neatly completing the phrase first, then calling out,

“Hey, sorry, didn’t see you there.”

He could be hard to read in faculty meetings, so she wasn’t sure if he was genuinely apologetic for possibly disturbing her or obliquely suggesting she might have announced her presence before he played, thinking he was alone. She decided to err on the side of conciliation.

“No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have interrupted you playing.” She would have had to raise her voice but he had started walking towards her and perched on the edge of a seat one row ahead.

“But, you were here first. And you didn’t say anything, so how did you interrupt me?” Mary wished she wasn’t so aware of how messy everything was around her, her bag and the papers, the pen she’d shoved into her bun, how one leg of her burgundy tights was bunching at the knee and her skirt had ridden up enough to show it.

“I guess, I, you’re really good,” she said, abandoning apologizing for her apology.

“Don’t sound too surprised, you’ll hurt my feelings,” he replied, grinning. She’d expected his usual sarcasm, but there was a sweetness to him she hadn’t seen before, not this close up.

“Goodness knows, I wouldn’t want to do **that** ,” she retorted, but she was out-of-practice; instead of sounding glib and witty, her words sounded painfully earnest and naïve. She’d been able to banter with men before but now she wondered if she’d lost that as well.

“I know you wouldn’t. Everyone knows that about you, at least we all know that,” he said. His voice was kind but what he said was off; she latched onto those last few words.

“‘At least?’ What else is everyone dying to know? I’m not exactly a mystery wrapped in an enigma over here,” she said. She’d taken the job at the end of the summer after Ms. Dix in the superintendent’s office had fast-tracked her application, so she was new to the school, but she’d gone to the Labor Day weekend mixer and tried to hang out the appropriate amount of time in the faculty lounge, chatting with people and generally making connections. It was much harder than in college and grad school, much harder for a lot of reasons, but she was trying, _finally_ her mother and sister would have said with a mixture of relief and exasperation, finally.

“Well, you sort of are. There’s all this talk about you coming, advanced degree, RADA, so lucky to get someone of your caliber, and when you go to Google, sorry, was I not supposed to admit I Googled you? Well, there’s not much there. Which is weird,” he said.

It had been an attempt to move on, a clunky way of reimagining herself, Caroline had even told her something like this would happen and she had nearly stamped her foot and insisted she wanted to do it this way, she needed to.

“It’s probably my name that’s the hang-up. Most of what you’d find about me isn’t under Mary Phinney,” she said. She couldn’t blame him for being curious but it was hard to talk about, what she’d done and of course, he’d be sure to ask why.

“What’s it under? Your accolades and papers and shit?” he asked.

“Rosemary von Olnhausen. That’s my real name, my legal name,” she explained and waited. She wouldn’t have to wait long, not with him, if his interactions at faculty meetings and conducting the pit orchestra were anything to go by.

“So, are you in the Witness Protection Program or something?”

“No, that’s not why, why I changed my name,” she replied. She didn’t think she would cry this time, if she had to talk about it; she hoped not.

“I know I seem like an asshole, because I keep pressing and you’re not saying much, but, I can’t help wondering, you know?” he said, his voice gentle, the way he’d talked to Edith Tsai about whether she’d been waitlisted or rejected from Amherst after she’d started crying during rehearsal and had wept throughout the remarkably decent rendition of the overture. She should just rip off the Band-Aid, Mary thought, he was tenacious and clearly, some part of her wanted to tell him, maybe the same part that had wanted to do something entirely inappropriate for a high school auditorium a few minutes ago.

“I was married, I married my college sweetheart Gus and took his name, and, well, he died of Hodgkin’s disease 18 months ago, they caught it too late. It was hard to get called Rosemary von Olnhausen, to be Rosemary, a twenty-nine year old widow, anymore so I thought, maybe it was stupid, I thought I could try Mary and just be her-- it wouldn’t hurt so much, not hearing him call my name,” she said. 

“‘Rosemary, that’s for remembrance.’ It suits you,” he said. “I mean, what I know about you. I’m sorry,” he said. Everyone did, they all said that and she wished it would help.

“‘You’re mighty like a rose,’” he added, musing it seemed like, but it was disconcerting and she wrinkled her brow. He gave her a small smile and regarded her thoughtfully. 

“It’s a Jerome Kern song…but it’s true. About you, I mean. Rose, could I maybe call you that? If we’re alone again, sometime?” he asked and sounded not at all glib, not mocking or sarcastic, but interested, the first hint that he had thought about her beyond the huge, disappointingly unsuccessful stink she’d made trying to get the administration to agree to Avenue Q, thought about her as a person outside the school, not the English and drama teacher who came to school committee meetings, the woman trying not to rant on stage at a bunch of talented but undisciplined teenagers who had less sense than ability, her, Rosemary, Rose and Mary, a woman who wore burgundy tights with old Doc Martens, who’d love to rock winged eyeliner but whose hand always shook, who didn’t want to be lonely anymore and maybe needed another artist to see it, to mend it.

“I think, you already have,” she said. He just looked at her and she blushed; he didn’t look away and so neither did she.


	5. Finale: “Younger Than Springtime” South Pacific

People always said it _The show must go on_ , but _must_ was really a stretch, at least it seemed that way during the run of South Pacific where Byron played Luther Billis, leering ferociously at the chorus of nurses, mostly freshman and sophomores; he sang “There is nothin’ like a dame” so wolfishly that no one told him his fly was open for the entire opening night performance. Even Mr. McBurney was unwilling to intercede and he was a stickler for the oddest things. Evidently not keeping your fly zipped, though. 

“People should say _The show might go on_ ,” Henry said, stirring his cup of coffee. They were at the diner they all affectionately called The Roach, the drama club’s standard after-performance hang-out, where the menu was 12 pages long and you could get a gyro and waffles, liver & onions and a hot fudge sundae with extra marshmallow sauce at any time of the day or night. Henry had ordered the coffee in an attempt to impress Emma, which Jed could have told him was unnecessary, had his mouth not been full of double cheeseburger. Rightly or wrongly, he was more sanguine about the affection Mary held him in. He had his flaws, Jed, but his table manners were excellent and he didn’t talk with his mouth full, had a napkin in his lap, and always waited for everyone to be served before he started to eat. His plate always held his cutlery at 4 o’clock when he was done, even if he’d just had onion rings or mozzarella sticks with extra red gravy.

“Or _The show may have gone on_ , like the middle school kids who were all so busy texting, we could have been performing 'Hair' or 'The Mikado' for all they noticed,” Emma said, dunking her cheese fries in ketchup before eating them daintily. She could have shoved them by the handful into her mouth and Henry wouldn’t have cared, Mary knew; he wished they had gotten a booth where there might have been a chance for him to lay his arm across the top of the banquette, but there were 6 of them and the possibility for a few more people to stop by, so the hostess Bridget, who went to church with Mary’s mom, had put them at a big round table, towards the back of the place where their raucous laughter would be muted and pleasant to the other diners and she wouldn’t have to field any dirty looks about “that bunch of Goth kids making a scene.” That would be an exaggeration, since Mary was wearing all black because it was laundry day and she’d forgotten to run a load and Jed had a temporary imitation Maori tattoo on his forearm as a dare and to bother his mother and that was the extent of their collective Goth-ness.

“I think it’s more like _The show must have gone on_ because we’re all here now, well, minus Val but really, he’s always had a weak stomach, but that’s it, our last musical, graduation in a few months and then, we’re scattered to the four winds,” Jed said. It had been a disruption when Val had tosses his cookies (Chips Ahoy, at least vaguely related to the sailor role Val had and then emphatically didn’t have), literally and figuratively, just before the curtain rose, but not exactly a surprise to anyone; they’d all had 4 years of Squiverian antics, Mary more since she and Val gone to the same parochial school, St. Veronica’s, until 9th grade. Jed was worried about her though he knew enough not to bring it up; she was still waiting to hear back from Brown and had been checking her phone as much as was humanly possible for an email or text while still washing that man out of her hair and acknowledging, through song, Nellie’s deep-seated racism.

“Maybe it ought to be _The show might well have gone on_ , sort of the Schrodinger’s cat construction; it does all seem sort of like a dream now,” Mary mused, digging around in her fluted ice cream cup for the secret lode of hot fudge Bridget always put there, focusing on the sweetness of the chocolate and not the hint of bitterness that enhanced it, trying to remember what it had felt like to have Jed as Emile sing “Some Enchanted Evening” to her and know that even though they were acting, he meant it and she wanted him to, and still being aware, as she had been the whole day, that Isabella Nunn in her AP Chem class had gotten the waitlist notification from Brown already and so it was only a matter of time…She wanted an answer so badly, but only the one she wanted, and her parents and sister, Jed, who’d been accepted to Dartmouth early (unimpressively, he insisted, there’d been a Foster at Dartmouth since the place was founded and there was a dull reading room in Baker-Berry named after his great-great-uncle Ebenezer Foster who’d invented something no one cared about anymore), all of them knew how much she was hoping and how hard she’d make it for them to console her if she didn’t get in, a stiff upper lip and an impenetrable, bright conviction that UMass had a great state school system and she wasn’t going to be missing out.

“I’m just going to geek out then and say _Go on, the show must_ because Master Yoda should always have the last word,” Sam remarked and they all laughed, which covered the sound of Mary’s phone buzzing in the pocket of her jacket and the little gasp Emma gave as Henry took her hand under the table and squeezed it. Same was the glue of the group and always had been, Jed’s best friend and Mary’s lab partner, in the church choir with Emma and in the community soccer league with Henry since 4th grade, Val’s next door neighbor and Charlotte’s boyfriend, valedictorian of their class and the one who’d convinced them all to go to “The Force Awakens” midnight showing on opening night. They’d been bleary-eyed the next day but it was nice that the reason was not homework for once (or insomnia in Jed’s case, he had a wicked hard time going to sleep, which he thought might help him long-term in med school; he hoped so anyway).

“I don’t know about the show, but here’s the bill. It’s late, you all belong at home,” Bridget said, dumping the wad of individual bills on the table; it was more work in one way, calculating all the tabs, but it got them out faster and there was no lengthy argument about what it meant if Jed paid for everyone. “Mary, say hi to your mom.”

“Hey Emma, can Henry give you a ride tonight?” Sam said as they walked to the parking lot. He was prepared to offer some plausible explanation why dropping her off was a problem, but as he suspected, she didn’t need it, just nodded and said “Sure, drive safe you two!” and sidled over to Hopkins just as Charlotte slipped her hand in Sam’s and murmured “You think it’ll take?” and Henry gave Sam an entirely grateful look.

“It’s his best shot, Lt. Cable and Liat. And there’s a nearly full moon,” Sam replied quietly.

Jed was glad they’d taken his car, because he didn’t want to wrangle with Mary over who was going to drive when he pointed out, “Your phone buzzed a few minutes ago.” She fumbled with it a few minutes and her eyes filled with tears, almost iridescent on her cheeks with the streetlight that angled in. He reached a hand over to wipe them away, muttering, “You did your best” and was startled to see her wide smile, feel her hand on his.

“I got in.”

The show had gone on.


	6. Encore: “Waitin’ for my Dearie” Brigadoon

“You know, I would have been more okay with the drama department picking ‘Brigadoon’ for the spring musical if they’d played up the time travel angle,” Mary said. They were hanging out in what her parents quaintly called the “rec room” as if that could justify the warring orange and avocado design palette. Emma was sprawled on the mustard yellow sectional and Sam had the old Barcolounger Mary’s father had only recently ceded to the basement. Jed and Henry were en route with snacks, if the numerous texts they’d sent were accurate (Jed being fond of updating with each selection so there’d been a flurry of **Doritos Funyuns Fritos Cheez-its** and thankfully, an emoji of powdered doughnuts to cut all the salt), and evidently, they’d successfully dodged Anne and Byron at the WaWa by skulking behind the chip aisle until the lovebirds left. Mary would never feel it was fair to actual lovebirds to refer to Anne and Byron that way, but there was no vulture equivalent reference. It was the perfect time to have this conversation, because Jed and Sam and Char for that matter really weren’t into sci-fi and would have ended up pelting them with popcorn, Funyuns being too precious to waste. Char was still upstairs, sucked into chatting with Mary’s sister Caroline about the intersectional feminist literary magazine they were starting but she promised to come down in time to watch the shows.

“But you like more dystopian stuff, Mare,” Emma said. “I mean generally. And dragons.”

“Yeah, but I’ll take a time portal if it’s all I’ve got to work with,” she replied. “Imagine if McBurney had decided to do all the costumes and sets with the time travel thing in mind! A Highland TARDIS! It could have been…like kind of edgy.”

“It would’ve been an Outlander knock-off then if it was up to him. He has no imagination. Did you hear him talking about whether the kilts were authentic enough? He went on for 20 minutes about sporrans,” Sam volunteered.

“Yeah, he’s a loon. But I still would’ve been more excited than now. D’you ever think, if we could time travel, if we would still be friends? Like in the past?” Mary said. Jed would have sighed and pounced on her to tickle her out of her musings but not Sam or Emma.

“It would’ve been hard, don’t you think? Like we probably couldn’t’ve been friends with Sam, not officially, and our families are so opposite, it would’ve been like being Yankees vs. Confederates in the Civil War,” Emma said.

“I can see you in a hoopskirt, Em,” Sam laughed.

“Well, I think we would’ve found a way,” Mary insisted. “To be friends, no matter what.”

“And would we all be star-crossed lovers too? Emma and Henry mooning for each other, me and Char up against unbeatable odds, you and Jed arguing over morality and justice, while secretly just wanting to jump each other’s bones?” Sam needled.

“Well, Jed and I squabble enough, if you listen to my mom,” Mary said. “And the course of true love never does run smooth.”

“You know that’s just a quotation, right?” Emma said. 

“It’s Shakespeare and that’s enough for me. Hey, I hear them,” Mary replied. Sam snorted; Jed and Henry made as much noise as a herd of rhinos, of course she heard them. It was a typical Mary move, to allow her to go “help” them with the bags and sneak a few minutes alone with Jed. They all let it go by, because as much as they loved their friends, no one wanted to walk in on them again and everyone had at least once; Mary didn’t even blush anymore and Emma suspected Jed was extra loud in ennumerating Mary’s many charms if he suspected an audience.

“Just don’t take too long. This Ghostbusters triple feature isn’t going to watch itself!” Emma called. Mary gave her a look over her shoulder and Sam smiled. They would’ve found a way to be friends, if Mary Phinney had any say about it, and in any century, barring Daleks, it was pretty likely she would.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my "big" present for my Mercy Street Secret Santa recipient, hufflepuffhermione. I tried to consider her interests quite carefully. You could certainly listen to all the listed songs as a playlist, though it's not required :)
> 
> The title is from Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific song, "You've Got to be Carefully Taught."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Isn’t It Kinda Fun](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10624044) by [middlemarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch)




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